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You’ll Have To Join A Waitlist For The First-Ever Graphene Jacket

Just what is graphene? It’s a wild sort-of-new material made of one thin layer of carbon atoms, which bond together naturally in a honeycomb pattern. A graphene layer conducts electricity (and thermal energy, a.k.a. heat) 200 times faster than silicon. And since silicon is kind of de rigeur for any and all modern electronics because it’s so good at what it does, that tells you how exciting graphene really is.

But none of that explains why someone’s constructing a jacket out of the stuff. Here’s the long and short of it: other than being good at transmitting voltage — which doesn’t sound like a plus for wearing it on your body — graphene is, like, crazy strong. And when you start stacking layers of it, and bonding those layers together, you get something so strong it sounds like hyperbole.

While making a good-looking black jacket out of the stuff might seem a bit superlative, the applications are clearly there for safety, defense, transport and all kinds of other fields. And in the meantime, why not use the most badass material in existence to make a new weatherproof shell?

This jacket isn’t made of pure graphene or anything; the textiles used are graphene-infused, which means if you can separate the fibers or seams of the jacket, you can get around the graphene. But it’s still going to be insanely light, insanely thin, and insanely strong — which makes for a layer that’s almost definitely more capable than your current Gore-Tex. Look out for more garments and pieces of gear using the stuff, and look to Vollebak to stay on the forefront of textile innovation.